Trainings & Workshops
As a trainer and facilitator, Eli creates engaged, interactive space to develop skills, gain knowledge, and build community.
• Delivered in many different settings over the last decade (see a partial listing of previous engagements or download Eli's CV as a PDF).
• Suitable for conferences, classes, staff meetings, and community gatherings.
• Can be tailored to various audiences, including grassroot activists, service providers, and university students, staff, and faculty.
• Designed to range from 1 to 3 hours.
• Eli is happy to discuss other possibilities to meet your needs.
Disability Access, Disability Issues, Disability Culture
Eli offers a range of possibilities--diversity talks, facilitated discussions, and trainings--to educate students, activists, and departments/agencies about disability. These possibilities include:
Moving Beyond Pity & Inspiration: Disability as a Social Justice Issue
Description:
Many people, both on college campuses and in the non-profit world, frequently interact with disabled people but with little awareness of disability as an issue of cultural competency and social justice. Often the major disability issues faced by disabled people are not about health but about disability-based marginalization and discrimination, which in turn impact access to education, employment, housing, and social services. Participants will leave this training with tools to create more disability access in their work places and communities.
Format:
Lecture, facilitated discussion, small group work.
Length:
The curriculum can be adjusted for a variety of situations ranging from a one-hour presentation to a day-long training.
A Politics of Access
Description:
Using foundational concepts from disability politics, this workshop explores how these ideas impact many marginalized groups and asks participants to develop a broad-based politics of access. On campuses, which students are actively recruited, and once enrolled, which students stay? In non-profit and grassroots organizations, who is actively welcome to take part and how; who stays, and who leaves? All of these questions are about access.
Format:
Lecture, facilitated discussion, small group work. Designed specifically for staff, faculty, and administrators.
Length:
90-120 minutes.
At the Intersection of Queerness and Disability
Description:
What issues do disabled LGBTQ peoples face? What are the connections among ableism, homophobia, and transphobia? How do issues around queer disability identities fit into a broader intersectional social justice framework? Join Eli for a facilitated dialogue about these questions and more.
Format:
Lecture, facilitated discussion, small group work.
Length:
90-120 minutes.
LGBT Issues and Identities
Eli trains on a variety of LGBT topics, ranging from Transgender 101 to the impact of homophobia and heterosexism. As staff at the University of Vermont’s LGBTQA Services for five years, he has trained hundreds of people, including RAs in residence halls, campus police, and Student Life staff, on these issues.
Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies
Description:
Oppression often lodges in our bodies, stealing them away from us in a myriad of ways. What stories do each of us have to tell about this thievery and the ways in which we resist it, working to reclaim our bodies? Using storytelling, images, and journal writing, this workshop explores these questions and issues across various identities, communities, and systems of oppression.
Format:
Facilitated discussion, small group work, journal writing.
Length:
2-3 hours.
Stories in Motion: Listening to the Marrow
(A Storytelling Workshop)
Description:
Which stories do we tell about our embodied experiences of who we are? This workshop delves into the ways our stories not only repeat, but also contradict, each other; how these stories about can change over time; and the power of telling multiple stories.
Format:
Facilitated discussion, small group work, journal writing.
Length:
90-120 minutes hours.
Digging Deep: Thinking about Privilege
Description:
In many communities as we work for social change, we are fueled by rage and grief, by naming the ways we are marginalized. Stories of oppression are important; they help us shape what we know about discrimination. These are the stories we most often tell, mostly leaving unspoken the ways in which we're privileged. In short, oppression is easier to claim than privilege. This workshop creates space and a structure to name and reflect upon our privileges, and strategize about how to use them effectively for social justice.
Format:
Facilitated discussion, small group work, journal writing.
Length:
2-3 hours.